The Quebec protests: the big picture

Miriam Smith is a professor in the Department of Social Science at York University. Her research focuses on Canadian and comparative politics, especially public policy and social movements. She has a B.A. from McGill and a Ph.D from Yale.

In the wake of Tuesday’s massive demonstration in Montreal, it’s worth standing back from the student protests – which now rank as one of the biggest and longest in Canadian history – to ask the question: what’s going on?

So far, the answer in much of the media seems to be that Quebec students are spoiled, they’re determined to spend money until Quebec is as indebted as Greece, or they don’t represent the majority of students who actually want to attend class.

These interpretations miss out on several key factors in the big picture that are driving the Quebec crisis, including the decline of our democratic political institutions, the role of Quebec nationalism and the impact of neoliberal globalization.

Perhaps most importantly, the Quebec protests are a reflection of the decline of Canada’s democratic political institutions. On the one hand, students are told that it’s not democratic to dictate government policy from the street. On the other hand, they watch a government that’s being investigated for corruption in the awarding of government contracts. They watch a federal government that resists judicial investigation into voter suppression. They perhaps remember the sponsorship scandal and all the other cases in which recent Canadian and Quebec governments set aside the principles of democracy and showed contempt for the rule of law.

Perhaps most disturbing is the progressive weakening of democratic commitment among elected political leaders. Formal legalities on paper are irrelevant if political actors are not willing to implement them. While governments are theoretically responsible to elected legislatures, they act as if these chambers are the electoral college, responsible for translating votes into governments, rather than actual forums for democratic deliberation.

Governments in the U.S. have condoned torture and illegal wiretapping and, as the Arar case showed, Canadian governments were complicit in this. The Harper government has systematically tried to silence critics and muzzle the media in clear-cut violation of democratic norms. The arrogance of the Charest government in passing a law that suppresses freedom of assembly is just another case of political leaders who seem ready to jettison democratic principles when they don’t like what the opposition has to say. This conduct is fuelling unrest in Quebec and will continue to do so until governments take concrete steps to restore our fraying democracy.

Another important ‘big picture’ factor in the current crisis is the role of Quebec nationalism. Quebecers tend to have a different view of the state and of collective responsibility than other Canadians. In part because of the role of nationalism in Quebec society and the sense that the francophone minority is on its own in a sea of English, collective institutions such as the church (first) and the state (later), have been assigned the role of cultural and linguistic protection.

This has spilled over into other areas of social policy. Generally, the Quebec government has been more generous than other Canadian provinces in providing services such as day care. As well, groups such as the women’s movement, trade unions, and student organizations have regularly engaged in institutionalized consultation with provincial governments and party allies such as the Parti Québécois. Therefore, there is more of a sense of social solidarity or the social model, as it is sometimes called in Quebec, than in most other Canadian provinces.

It’s also important to recall that francophones in Quebec were disadvantaged in terms of higher education prior to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. The modernization of higher education in Quebec as well as various measures that encouraged the use of French in the workplace during the 1960s and 1970s contributed to an expansion of access to higher education for francophone students. Cutting off access to education has a different resonance in Quebec than in other provinces. While in Ontario higher education might be seen as a ticket to a middle class job or as a potential engine of economic growth, in Quebec, higher education is inextricably linked to cultural, linguistic and national identity.

Neoliberal globalization also plays a role in the Quebec student movement. Like the Occupy movement, the student strike poses a challenge to capitalism in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Students have less economic and social opportunity while governments throw up their hands and seem incapable of solving economic problems. Youth revolts are occurring all over the world in reaction to the economic crisis. In that sense, the Quebec student movement is a reflection of a wider global phenomenon.

Neoliberalism is based on the assumption that individuals are responsible for their destiny. This is a rejection of collective social responsibility and is at odds with the Quebec nationalist political tradition. As governments of Quebec have been caught in the vise of the economic crisis and have tried to implement neoliberal policies that place more responsibility on the individual, it is not surprising that there has been a backlash against the individualization of responsibility for matters such as higher education.

When people disagree, democracy is put to the test. The current crisis is a test of Quebec’s democratic political institutions and the outcome of this crisis will resonate long after the students have returned to class.

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